UKC

If it was offered.

Nothing to do with losing or winning, but in a clear response to the fact that the government really does not know what it is doing regarding Brexit and is completely split and now hopefully people see that reality, and are beginning to see the gravity of what Brexit will actually mean.

I wonder what the result would be.

I only hope that the legal case against triggering article 50 wins, just to 'save' us all from what will be massive cost of living rises, and rising unemployment, not to mention a lack of opportunity for the younger generation to work in Europe.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:
Cheats never prosper.

And the Brexit camp spouted the most lies

In reply to The Lemming:

from my experience cheats and liars often do prosper in life.

In reply to buzby:




Well the EU toffs are living the high life....

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

with what question?

In reply to The Ice Doctor: So, in five to ten years time and none of the dreadful things happen that you are predicting will you then admit that the remain camp scared the hell out of people with lies and fantasy?

We were told we wouldn't survive outside the Euro, remember the prophets of doom?

Sure there will be some discomfort ahead whilst the continentals have their temper tantrums and react with their usual spite, but it will all blow over.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

H. L. Mencken was right.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:



At this moment in time a clear majority to remain, 6 months from now a landslide to remain.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

We don't even need people to change their minds for a re run of the referendum to if enough of the silly old farts have died off, and enough young people turned 18. It was always going to be the case that by the time Brexit actually happened the majority of people would be No voters as the Exiteers would be dealt with by the Grim Reaper.

In reply to cragtaff:
I would like to think it will all blow over, but the markets are currently being 'played', we don't have the trade negotiators we need, the government is not united in its opinion on what to do, this is completely uncharted water, many of the people in Europe can't believe we voted to leave.

How did the remain camp scare people? I actually think what they stated would happen is currently being played out.

What are the actual benefits of living Europe going to be? Massive immigration has already happened, the country has changed in its enthicity dynamic. Please do list the direct benefits you think you will experience from Brexit.

And I suppose you agree with Teresa Mays listing of enthicity of workers of every business is the best way forward? Thats not controlling immigration, that tantamount to direct discrimination.

I would like to believe some good would come out of it, but I doubt it. It will have a massive impact on my life, in fact it already has. As climbers it makes Europe a more expensive place to visit, and I am left I wondering if the exchange rate will ever recover.

Brexit has already affected my life negatively, has it affected your life negatively, or positively?

In reply to The Ice Doctor:


Leave. Maybe by a squeakier margin.

People aren't paying attention and it isn't hurting too bad yet. More importantly Rothermere, Murdoch et al haven't changed their tune.
jk

In reply to Jimbocz:

The "silly old farts" that I talked too voted as per their grandchildren s wishes which was generally to remain.They were astute enough to realise that it was not their generation that really counted.

You should aim your barbed comments at those in the age range of 25- 60.

In reply to neilh:

you're wasting your time, he's coming out with these ageist comments as if he's on timed interrupts ...

In reply to neilh:



Quite the opposite for me unfortunatley.

Wally

In reply to The Ice Doctor:
My adult life has been affected by being in the EU.
Would things have been different if we hadn't joined at all - yes.
Would things have been better or worse - who knows.
Will things be different when we leave - yes.
Will they be better or worse - who knows.
Although some on both sides seem to have access to a crystal ball that is not available to most.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

As much as I believe in the EU, and wanted us to remain, I'm not convinced that making it so hard for Britain to leave is good for the EU. Obviously they don't want other countries to follow suit, but surely it's an essential aspect of the EU that countries can leave, that each nation retains its sovereignty and that the EU is mutual benefit pact and not a United States of Europe.

So whilst we can't dismiss the negative predictions of Brexit as scaremongering, nor can ignore the argument from the leave camp that the EU is looking more and more like an undemocratic juggernaut out of control.

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place

In reply to Chris the Tall:

It's not hard for us to leave. A simple act of parliament to repeal the act which took us into europe and Robert is your father's brother.

It's what happens *after* we leave that has many of us remoaning.

In reply to neilh:



Not sure what you are on about, a quick look at yougov finds the following:

The most dramatic split is along the lines of education. 70% of voters whose educational attainment is only GCSE or lower voted to Leave, while 68% of voters with a university degree voted to Remain in the EU. Those with A levels and no degree were evenly split, 50% to 50%.

Age is the other great fault line. Under-25s were more than twice as likely to vote Remain (71%) than Leave (29%). Among over-65s the picture is almost the exact opposite, as 64% of over-65s voted to Leave while only 36% voted to Remain. Among the other age groups, voters aged 24 to 49 narrowly opted for Remain (54%) over leave (46%) while 60% of voters between the ages of 50 and 64 went for Leave.

Even though it sounds like your immediate friends made the right call, the rest of us were at the mercy of the old and the uneducated.

In reply to neilh:

my cousins grandfather paid her £20 to vote leave as she wasnt fussed/ is too dim to care.

my parents blankly refused when i suggested they vote according to my wishes and in the best interests of their future grandchildren.

so, perhaps your experience wasnt universal. perhaps mine wasn't

In reply to Chris the Tall:


Not really. We've decided that we want out of the mutual benefit pact,[1] and that means that we won't get our share of the benefits any more. The fact that we're pretty much screwed without the benefits doesn't make that unreasonable, it means that we should have taken that into account before deciding that deciding to leave.

[1] Or, strictly speaking, we've decided that we want out of some part of the mutual benefit pact and some people have announced that the only democratically acceptable way doing this is the one that means that we won't get any of the benefits any more.

In reply to Andy Hardy:

The point I am struggling to make is that we shouldn't expect the worsening economic situation to change everyone's mind, for many it will strengthen the resolve

In reply to cragtaff:


You mean the things that are alredy happening despite Brexit not happening yet?

In reply to Jimbocz:

That is an incredibly condescending statement to the old and uneducated.I asssume you have friends who are in that category , if not your family.

Maybe you want to have a think about it.

In reply to neilh:

what was condescending about it?

In reply to La benya:

I agree.

But to blame " the old" is just ridiculous.

I know quite a few under 25's who could not be bothered to vote..even though they were at uni.

In reply to neilh:



You are going to have to make your argument clearer. What did I say that was untrue? That old people voted to leave? That uneducated people voted to leave?
I can't figure out who I am supposed to have insulted. Should I just have been gentler in pointing out these things? Perhaps I should have used bigger words so the uneducated's feelings would be spared? Should I have written it in rap slang so that the over 65s would not be reminded of their disastrous vote?

In reply to neilh:
yup, i would probably point my accusing finger at the apathetic young non-voters more so than the oldies. At the least the oldies had their reasons for voting out, and in fact, if i were in their position financially and culturally i may have voted similarly.

every vote is the same though, only the old vote in numbers worth worrying about, and so they get all the good stuff (triple lock pensions for example)

however that doesnt mean the stats to back up the fact that the people who swayed the vote were the 'old and uneducated (less educated?) are incorrect

In reply to La benya:
You need to look at why the 25 -65s voted out, that is more telling imho, rather than castigating whole groups who you probably do not talk to.

And I hate to point this out there are one hell of a lot of seriously educated old people out there over the age of 65.

In reply to La benya:

By the way I do think having a referundum on this issue was ridiculous and should never have happened. It should have just been left to Parliament.But eh..we live in a democracy....

In reply to neilh:

You are taking a lot of offence from something that was just a statement of the demographic trends. No-one is saying that there won't be educated people who voted out too; or that all of the young or all of the old voted one way.

BTW it is odd that you keep saying "25-60" year olds given that my understanding was that 25-34 year olds voted predominately to stay - I thought it was the 45+ who majority voted out. I also recall reading that the 75+ age group tilted back towards remain, but can't find a source for that from a quick google search

In reply to andyfallsoff:

I'm talking entirely from memory here but I seem to remember seeing some statistics that showed that in the youngest voting category, 18-25 or similar, of those eligible to vote, over 80% either abstained (the big majority) or voted leave. If you want to point to the finger, that is where I would go. And maybe then castigate a Remain campaign which focused on preserving the wealth of the middle and older age categories, instead of inspiring the young.

In reply to Jimbocz:


It was a secret ballot, you do not know how individuals voted. Might turn out all the youngsters voted to leave the EU org.

In reply to neilh:


i'm in that group, i would suggest a further split up to 30-65 might be more useful (although i have no stats to back that up, thats purely based on my peers)


never said the two features were mutually exclusive

In reply to The Ice Doctor:
No way, its democracy, the people have spoken and we all need to get on with it.

We couldn't possibly fly in the face of democracy by having a little bit more of it could we? That would just be peverse.

In reply to andyfallsoff:
I have met too many under 25's who could not be bothered to vote. I am still astounded.

And what is worse, they either had degrees or were at uni.

So when people say it was the old and uneducated, yes I do find it offensive.

And the stats suggest that they " young" did not get out and vote in vast numbers.Lazy and ignorant as oppossed to old and uneducated.

In reply to neilh:



Across the country that simply isn't true, the older you are, the more likely that you would have voted to leave. Under 25s were very strong remainers, 25-49 year olds were narrow remainers, 50-64 year olds were strong leavers and 65+ were very strong leave.

In reply to neilh:

I agree that those who didn't vote have done themselves a disservice, and that the voting turnout for 18-25s was low (I think about 34%). There may be some mitigating factors (recent changes to voter registration will not have helped) although I agree there is no excuse for not voting.

However I don't think that means it is offensive to discuss how people voted based on demographics. It might be worth looking at why young people are increasingly less likely to vote - whether that is because they feel that there is no point and that things are loaded against them (a reasonable charge given the drive of a lot of policy in the last few years) or if there is another reason.

In reply to BnB:
You either remember wrongly, or it was a duff fact (there were a few about).

The youth turnout was much higher than initially reported, about 64% of which over 70% voted remain.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/you...

Edited to add link.

In reply to The New NickB:


So 55% of young people did not vote to remain?

In reply to BnB:


Which isn't 80%+

In reply to The New NickB:


And you know this how given it was a secret ballot?

In reply to The New NickB:
So those who had experienced the UK before we joined the EU probably voted to leave while those who had only ever known EU membership probably voted to remain?

In reply to Lion Bakes:


Read the article I took the effort to link to my post.

In reply to baron:


Ah, the early 70s a famously joyous time of British economic supremacy

In reply to The New NickB:

I must have been stuck in my head with the original data referred to in your article.

In reply to The New NickB:
About 64% turnout from under 25s. The much lower 36% figure publicised in the immediate aftermath of the referendum was effectively an extrapolation from last years general election.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/young-people-referendum-tu...

In reply to The New NickB:

You guessed in other words. The information simply is not available. The ballot paper used to vote did not in anyway indicate who made that vote, and therefore their age. Polls are notoriously inaccurate and often introduce bias.

In reply to The New NickB:
While it would be ridiculous to think of the UK as in anything other than a dire economic state in the 1970's it doesn't detract from the fact that many who lived through those times seemed to prefer the possibility of a return to such times over continued membership of the EU.

In reply to baron:


So it seems. No further comment required.

In reply to baron:

But who in their right mind would like Spandau Ballet and Simply Red to be lying in the near future rather than the distant past?

In reply to felt:
Gosh, (luckily) I'd forgotten about them

In reply to felt:

and ELO in the Past Present and Future

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Accepting the fact that as the demographic gets older they are more likely to vote out we have to ask ourselves why?
Could it be the case that the older people get the more experience of life in general they have and the more disillusioned they are with the EU slowly creeping from a trading agreement to a super state?

Give it 10 years and lets have a vote on re joining (assuming the EU is still there in 10 years).
Is it not possible that the young of today will be older then with more life experience and might not like what they see whilst those just starting out in life with little experience spend months being insulting and abusive towards them?

A return to the 1970 economy when we were crippled by the union's in this country is more likely to return within the EU than without in my opinion.

We are undoubtedly in for some tough times ahead but as a ration we will endure and come out of the other side, maybe stronger or may be weaker but if we didn't try we would never know.

In reply to neilh:


That's basically the majority of the voting population, we have a reasonable idea why they voted out and it's not one reason: sovereignty, straight bananas, fewer foreigners, sticking it to the man, Polish plumbers, human rights law, because the EU is no longer a coal and steel union, Somalians, French terrorism, it's undemocratic, £350M to the NHS, they never see a white doctor anymore, red tape, millions of turks are coming, rebuild the empire, inexpressible purple faced vein bulging rage with spittle, bring back the kite mark, re-open the coal mines, the Euro, the EU is taking my mobility scooter off me, something to do with railway gauging, Greece... at least those were some of the 'reasons' I came across while out campaigning to remain. Basically mostly confusion, misapprehension and tabloid stoked artificial rage sprinkled with an occasional sprinkle of xenophobia and misty eyed nostalgia on top.


Nobody has suggested otherwise.
jk

In reply to Dax H:

Intersting interviews on R4 Today programme about the voting split. Nothing to do with age etc. It reflected your social economic status. A and B's voted remain. The rest voted leave.

The view being A nd B's have benefited from globalisation etc. the rest - a straight no.

Probably a more realistic view.

And the view is that migration is fine as long as it is controlled......

In reply to Dax H:

age wasn't a very strong predictor of voting preference. a much stronger predictor was the level of further education.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2016/jun/23/eu-referend...

In reply to neilh:

I suspect personally that there is some link to age but that you have already to be in a group or groups that are predisposed to be anti EU and that the effect of age is simply to reinforce and exclude counter arguments.

But simply to make assumptions about "oldies" in general is moronic

In reply to Bob Hughes:



Yes further education was a big thing.
Could that be because the more educated you are the less you are affected by things like migration.

You will in the course of your working day deal with migrants but assuming you are using your education you will be in a professional roll and the migrants you are dealing with will be on the same level.

The other end of the scale is the uneducated factory worker who is in the minority at the place he works due to the amount of cheap migrant labour, a lot of the places that I visit don't have anyone speaking English on the factory floor.
The area I live in has a very large population of East Europeans living 6 people to a 2 bed house.
This is the face of immigration that a lot of people see.
Services are stretched to the breaking point and all these 300k people who come each year work but how many are working for minimum wage and taking tax credits to top up?

I myself have no problem with professional immigration and bringing in the skills we need but anyone who is able bodied can nail Pallets together or pack boxes so let's have a push towards employing our own unemployed rather than migrants, if that means enforcing employment on people then so be it.

In reply to Dax H:







The thing is, most of the above is actually a failure of domestic policy rather than a problem with the EU. The factory workers on low pay do have a point, but the government has been prepared to allow their wage to be squeezed. The rush of cheap labour to the UK has been a result of conditions being created that are conducive to that. If the minimum wage had been bumped up (needs to be well over a tenner an hour in my opinion but some will say its bonkers) then there wouldn't be a demand for cheap labour because we would have mechanised and the immigration climate wouldn't exist. Sure there would be migration, but its the millions of jobs that are powering that.

I think if you went looking for people that you could enforce to bang nails into pallets you would struggle to find that many, and the reality is that the task would be automated (and ultimately more cost effective) if the cost of employment was higher.

In reply to Bootrock:
As is Nigel "I am not a career politician" Farage.

BTW I sat on an EN Working Group, it certainly wasn't the high life, we ordered in sandwiches from the bakery just up from the BMC offices. I had tuna mayo.

In reply to cragtaff:

Some of us consider rampant xenophobia and racism to be dreadful. Your post demonstrates you don't.

In reply to petellis:

Upto a point.

And where do EU rules on the free movement of labour fit in?

To blame it on a domestic policy in Exiters eyes just does not match up.They see uncontrolled migration allowed by the EU as described by Dax H.

I voted remain and yet I also totally understand/get where Dax H is coming from. It is a huge failure of the remain campaign to really grasp and understand this issue. The likes of Andy Burnham etc got it.

In reply to neilh:


You've missed my point. People move for jobs, less jobs: less likely to move. The wave of immigration to do low skilled jobs has been driven by there being lots of easily accessible low skilled jobs. In the short term its an easier option for governments to flood the market with easily accessible labour than to have to explain to business and the public how we are going to do things the slow way and mechanise.


Yes of course , I understand that too. Its also easily framed like that, and has been in general by our media.


I agree, we had nearly 15 years of a labour government doing everything it could to encourage immigration, opting in to everything it could. Then the later stages of that government and the ones since did absolutely nothing to raise wages. What we have right now is the response.

In reply to petellis:
If the minimum wage was over £10 how many more immigrants do you think that will attract?
It's an unfortunate fact (well fact as in my opinion backed up by what I see on site and in factories every day) that I migrants, particularly east European ones work harder and faster than our indigenous population.

Whilst ever there is an almost unlimited pool of hard workers the UK workers (if they even want to work) won't get a look in.

I know it's now law (at least I think it is) that you have to advertise for UK workers before you can start bringing in Polish etc but there are ways round that.


Edit to add.
Net migration of 300k per year, at what point does this become unsuitable?
We are an island and everyone on this forum is passionate about protecting the remaining green spaces so at some point we will run out of room.

In reply to petellis:

LOL I think you missed the point. Which came first? The EU freedom of movement principle.Without those you would simply not have had uncontrolled migration.I reckon that is why the Brexiters focus on this so much.

The results which you talk about as regards wages flowed from that( it was not the other way round as before then everything was controlled).

I have never seen an analysis of migration across the EU. It would be intersting to see some form of chart showing the migration tends over the last 10 years. Which citizens moved to which countries within the EU. Have you ever seen any stats like that? Interested to find out.Not sure anybody really knows.

In reply to Dax H:

The high levels of EU migration were down to a one off factors i.e. relatively undeveloped countries in Eastern Europe being allowed to enter the EU with full rights to move anywhere. The UK pushed for these countries to be allowed in and did not use transitional arrangements to prevent an initial flood of migrants. Blaming Brussels is a bit hypocritical (but not nearly as hypocritical as Boris now saying he would like Turkey to join the EU).

Pragmatically, the EU has pretty much run out of Eastern European states to incorporate, Turkey and Ukraine are not going to happen. The eastern european states that are already in are modernising rapidly which will result in people returning home with new skills to take advantage of the opportunities. After the attacks in France and Germany the politics in the EU is turning decidedly anti-immigration and I wouldn't be at all surprised if by the end of next year they were chucking people out faster than they came in.

My prediction is the whole 'controlling our borders against migration from the EU' thing is going to be a non-issue in a few years and we will have caused massive economic disruption for no benefit by responding to a problem which is already in the past.

In reply to Dax H:


I think it is because you feel<i/> less affected by migration because you feel like you have options and a future. On average eu migrants are better educated than the local population - which is to say if you are an investment banker you are at least as likely to be working side-by-side or to have missed out on a promotion because of a french or italian banker as a labourer or plumber is to have lost a job thanks to a pole or romanian. The difference is that investment bankers - and other well-educated people in middle class jobs - don't feel like they are as on the line. Well let's face it, being passed over for a promotion in investment banking probably isn't as hard going as missing out on a job as a labourer.

I see this from the other side. I am a Brit (university educated, middle class office job) in Spain. No Spaniard has ever suggested i am taking a Spaniard's job. In fact, when i have pulled the odd spaniard up (e.g. someone started telling me that South Americans are culturally averse to soap which is why they don't have showers) by pointing out that i am an immigrant i universally get the answer "but you're different".

> You will in the course of your working day deal with migrants but assuming you are using your education you will be in a professional roll and the migrants you are dealing with will be on the same level.

> The other end of the scale is the uneducated factory worker who is in the minority at the place he works due to the amount of cheap migrant labour, a lot of the places that I visit don't have anyone speaking English on the factory floor.

Just as an observation, the office i work in (HQ of an international spanish company) is very multicultural. I think we have 50 odd nationalities in the office, here in Madrid. And there are many floors of the building where you don't hear a word of Spanish spoken. Polish, Russian, English, German, French are the main ones - not in that order. I don't get a sense from any of the Spaniards who work here that that is a problem. There is the odd bit of ribbing between nationalities but certainly no resentment.

> I myself have no problem with professional immigration and bringing in the skills we need but anyone who is able bodied can nail Pallets together or pack boxes so let's have a push towards employing our own unemployed rather than migrants, if that means enforcing employment on people then so be it.

I think two things have happened:
1. There has been decades of under investment in skills for people in the areas gutted by the end of the mining industry which were, not coincidentally, generally pro-leave(north east, parts of the midlands and cornwall). The government of the time, and subsequent governments of all stripes, understood that the economy must change and move on but didn't understand that the people and communities affected need to be helped through that. My guess is you'd have less anti-immigration feeling if people felt more capable of getting the skills they need to earn a modest and honest living for themselves and their families.
2. the other interesting thing about the referendum voting patterns is that absolute levels of immigration to an area did not correlate with a leave vote, but the rate of change did. This suggests that there isn't an absolute maximum to immigration (or at least if there is we haven't reached it) but there is a maximum rate of change above which people reject it.

In reply to Dax H:


The 'we are an island' line is a specious argument. As a general rule all EU countries are a fixed size. All EU countries have green space to protect. Your argument is hardly unique to the UK.

In reply to Shani:
Lebensraum?

In reply to Shani:

We are also not an island. NI is on a different island from England, Scotland and Wales

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Well those Eastern European countries still have a long long way to go apart from in the capital city's as a rule. If it was me I would be off to Germany or the uk like a shot given the opportunity. And there is still high unemployment which is why the uk is sonattractive

In reply to La benya:



Because to them , they already were voting in the best interests of their future grandchildren.

Let it go man. It's over...

In reply to neilh:

If you were Romanian and going to be off to Germany or the UK like a shot you'd have done it by now because you have had the opportunity since 2007. The EU has grown pretty much as far east as it can without starting a war with Russia - Ukraine being a message to that effect - which means the big wave of migrants from Eastern Europe is already over. Over the next 5 or 10 years the same thing will happen in Romania and Bulgaria as happened in East Germany and Poland - increasing prosperity and gradual balancing out of emigration and immigration.

If we had wanted to control immigration from Eastern Europe we should have implemented transitional arrangements in 2007 as other EU countries did. Paying a massive economic price to slam the door in 2018 or 2019 when things are already balancing out naturally is just stupid.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:
Albania, Serbia, Montengro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia, no shortage of potential immigrants there to replace 'wealthy' Poles and Romanians.

In reply to baron:


The EU is 508 million people, those countries maybe 15 million in total. Lots of country names but all of them together less than half the population of Poland. Even if the EU absorbs them all its completely manageable.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:
Except that they don't want to be absorbed into the EU, they (the countries I named) want to have all the benefits of EU membership but I bet they won't be net contributors.
Their workers will migrate to countries such as the UK and will be a ready supply of labour, thus keeping UK wages at a low level. Not good for UK workers.
The countries themselves will further drain the EU's already depleted coffers as they will undoubtedly receive large amounts of EU funded aid. Not good for the German taxpayers.

In reply to baron:

Probably not at first, but the most populous countries in the group are not that backward economically. When they get investment they will modernise and catch up with the rest of the EU quite quickly just like East Germany, Poland, Latvia and so on.


15 million extra people in a block with 508 million isn't a big deal. A fraction of them will migrate but it isn't that hard to get into the EU from those countries now so young people who are really determined will have done so already. As investment flows in to take advantage of cheap labour there will be more jobs available without migrating.


Germany needs migrants. They aren't having enough kids and their industry needs more workers. If you take migrants from eastern europe you get inter-marriage and integration, if you take migrants from Algeria/Syria/Afghanistan you get a religious barrier creating sealed off communities and tension.

Short term it will cost the EU and Germany money. Medium to long term geographic factors, improved governance and access to capital will restore the economies of that region and the EU will benefit. One of the things the Germans are really good at is seeing long term advantage and making large investments to realise it.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:
I'll bow to your greater knowledge as to how well eastern european economies are doing but I am slightly concerned that the picture you paint of the state of the EU, both economic and social, at present and in the future, is a tad rosy.